[arin-discuss] [ppml] Counselstatementon Legacy assignments?(fwd)

[michael.dillon at bt.com]

> I think the argument that what you are really paying for is 
> registration service is specious.... 

It's not specious. ARIN is a non-profit corporation under Virginia law.
It has a charter, it has bylaws, it has members and it has a Board of
Trustees. The members (like you and me) elected the Trustees and they
decided what the fees are paying for. Twice a year they tell us all
about it with financial reports at the ARIN meetings. We can see the
revenue, the expenses, the savings account to cover emergencies. We can
see how the fees are broken down and that they are calculated as largely
paying for registration services.

> what am I paying for in 
> a year in which I don't require any registration services?  

Clearly you are not paying for IP addresses. You are supporting the
operation of a non-profit membership organization so that things like
the whois directory and in-addr.arpa service keeps running. You are also
supporting a stewardship structure for managing IP addresses rather than
letting it be run by a government bureaucracy or some pirate
capitalists.

> Why, during those years when I don't need more IP space, is 
> my fee higher than someone else who actually did go through a 
> registration process in that year... just because my existing 
> blocks are bigger?

Because you screwed up when you applied for your allocation and didn't
ask for just 6 months worth like you should have. Fortunately, ARIN does
not actively punish you for this. You just end up paying the same fees
that you would have if you had come back for more addresses twice per
year.

> It would seem that existing policy is that you do pay on a 
> per-IP basis up to a certain point (/14 in IPv4), and then 
> it's all you can eat.  
> 
> I think the policy should be:

The fee structure is not a matter of ARIN policy. It is decided by the
Board of Trustees. Of course they can and do consult members on this.
The newly announced fee structure incorporates a couple of suggestions
that I made to a BOT member a while back.

> The Yearly cost of maintaining an allocation should equal 
> Arin's total annual costs divided by the total number of IP 
> numbers allocated times the total number of IPs being used by 
> the member.  

Because the legal status of IP addresses has not yet been decided in the
courts, the BOT is quite wisely stearing clear of fees which might imply
that you are paying rent per IP address.

> Right now, as your allocations get larger, you have less and 
> less of an incentive to worry about whether or not you are 
> wasting IP space.

Fees are not allowed to be an instrument of ARIN policy. If you want to
give people incentives, they have to be done without fees. You could
propose some form of regular audits of past allocations. You could
specify best-practices that members must adhere to. Like with phone
numbers, you could require all members to file monthly reports of
utilization with projected runout dates. But you can't touch fees.

And no matter what you suggest, it will never happen unless a majority
of members agree, and a substantial majority of the Advisory Council
aggrees, and ARIN Counsel agrees that it is legal and within ARIN's
Power, and the Board of Trustees agrees. It is rarely possible to sell a
well-crafted proposal. Most of the time, you need to compromise a lot,
water things down, and settle for just making things a bit better.

--Michael Dillon